MANAGING MENOPAUSE

Experts offer advice and support to help women enter a new chapter in their lives.

- KATY YOUNG

As I approach my 43rd birthday, I’ve decided it’s finally time to talk about the ‘m’ word: menopause.

Girlfriends, colleagues, mentors, sisters, and doctors have always shared their wisdom on what I can expect from different stages of my life, but when it comes to this universal female experience, the silence is deafening. Apparently, society still views the menopause as an embarrassing affliction to be kept under wraps.

Yet with three in five menopausal women reporting that their symptoms are having a negative impact on them at work, this is clearly an issues that calls for an urgent conversation. “Menopause remains a taboo for everyone; most of us don’t know the facts about it,” says Saska Graville, the co-founder of MPowered Women, a community of doctors and wellbeing experts dedicated to providing support for this stage of women’s lives. “We tend to sleepwalk into it in our mid-forties, having no idea what symptoms to look out for.” Hot flushes may be familiar from popular culture, but there are in fact 37 possible side effects, including brain fog, loss of confidence, and aching bones, not to mention changes to the skin and hair.

The entrepreneur Rebekah Brown was so disappointed by the paucity of intelligent treatments for these symptoms that she decided to launch her own supplement brand, MPowder. “I was turned away from the doctor for being too young,” she recalls, “but equally, I found it so confusing having to search through the dusty shelves of Holland & Barrett for remedies to ease hormonal changes.” With women over 45 making up more than 58 per cent of beauty consumers, which is a £27 billion industry, Brown spotted a huge gap in a growing market. “After all, we are the first generation that will be post-menopausal for half of our lives,” she points out.